In today's information-based economy, information is recognized by many corporations as a primary asset which, much like currency, fully realizes its value only with frequent use. Information is an important asset not only for corporations, but also for individuals who often need to repetitively provide certain personal facts to merchants and service providers with whom they do business.
Collections of personal information, in the form of demographics, are invaluable to companies wishing to conduct targeted marketing campaigns. Examples of information collections include insurance policies, legal documents, medical records, and financial and credit histories. This information represents a valuable commodity which many corporations are willing to purchase.
In fact, many companies are known to massage their consumer accounts to create mailing lists which can be sold. Likewise, most consumers know this happens, and are not surprised to receive a barrage of catalogs from previously unknown vendors after placing a mail order for goods. Many consumers are annoyed by this practice and some may even avoid the offending vendor in the future in order to prevent further abuse of their personal information. However, most of these consumer concerns could be eliminated, or at least reduced, if this data were first scrubbed or sanitized to remove all references to the particular individual before being made available as marketing data.
Privacy is a growing concern in the internet and electronic commerce arena because each time you enter a site, your browser already tells the server a lot about you, such as which browser you're using and your IP address. This makes it easy for data miners to track site visits and strip information from unsecured data transmissions. In response, the Internet business community is promoting Open Profiling Standards (OPS) which allow individuals to save personal information on a hard drive on their PC and only allow others to access portions of this information after the individual grants permission.
There is also concern over the use of cookies, or tokens that are attached to a user program and change depending on the web site areas entered. When you enter a web site using cookies, you may be asked to fill out a form providing information such as your name and interests. This information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your web browser which stores it for later use. The next time you go to the same web site, your browser will send the cookie to the web server. The server can use this information to present you with custom web pages. Cookies are typically designed to be persistent and remain in the browser for long periods of time, and can be used to unknowingly disclose the address of the site you most recently visited, or movements within a site.
Consumers also increasingly want to systematically organize and secure personal information but are generally limited in their ability to do so by the availability of commercial software programs. For example, certain financial planning and management software packages provide a facility for storage of personal information on the consumer's PC. This practice can be vexing if the PC subsequently experiences an anomalous operation or a system malfunction. There is then a need for a system which would allow personal information to be professionally backed-up, thus protecting against mishap, natural disaster, negligence, or even PC theft.
Consumers also want the ability to control and define access to their information, using presently available technology to securely and privately store, sort and/or exchange information. There is then a need for a third party who would provide these types of services with a primary aim of preserving its consumers' personal privacy.